In Effective Agility Requires Cultural Changes: Part 1, I said that real agile approaches require cultural change to focus on flow efficiency, where we focus on watching the work, not the people. Too few organizations can do that. But teams can change how they work—in any approach. Here are three suggestions to emulate flow efficiency […]
I’m surprising myself with this experiment and the fact that I am continuing it. I suspect I’m successful because it’s just a minute of some in-progress writing. Transcript: I’m Johanna Rothman, and this is 60 Seconds of Johanna’s WIP for November 9, 2023, where I read an excerpt of just a minute of some
My weekly 60 seconds of WIP: This one is also from the project lifecycles book. The Transcript: I’m Johanna Rothman, and this is 60 Seconds of WIP for October 5, 2023, where I read an excerpt that I hope is just a minute of some book in progress. This excerpt is from the currently-named Project
Several people on LinkedIn commented on my post, Want Better and Faster Results? Increase Team Size and Reduce WIP. They wondered if adding more people to a small team would violate Brooks’ Law. As with all good questions, the answer is “It depends.” It depends on how your lifecycle manages feedback loops and learning, how
I’m experimenting with audio and video. So I started a podcast called, “60 Seconds of Johanna’s WIP.” Listen here: If you want to listen through your podcast app, go to 60 Seconds of Johanna’s WIP September 29, 2023. I will also add those videos to my YouTube channel. The plan—and I use that term quite
How do you know when you finished a feature? You might have a checklist, to make sure multiple people looked at all the artifacts, and that everything is checked in. (This is easier if you work as a mob/ensemble, pair, or swarm.) In addition, a product leader might approve the feature. Finally, the team, a
A colleague unfamiliar with lifecycles or agility asked, “How can we use sprints in this approach?” and pointed to a phase-gate approach with documentation deliverables after each phase. It looked just like the serial lifecycle in the image on the left. (That’s because a finance person drew the lifecycle.) I said, “You can’t use ‘sprints.’
We talk a lot about empowered or self-organizing teams in the agile community. However, I don’t see too many self-organizing or empowered teams at my clients. Not because my clients are stupid—far from it. Everyone does the best job they know how to do. However, every manager’s micromanagement pervades all levels. Instead of talking about
One of my clients wants to use shared services “teams” as they start their agile transformation. Their developers work on a product for months and years at a time. However, the testers and UI people are part of pools of people. The organization calls these testers and UI people, “shared services.” Shared service-thinking denies the
I’ve been speaking with several possible clients. They’re having trouble with Scrum. The managers don’t believe the teams need product owners, so the teams don’t have POs. The managers think a Scrum Master can support at least four teams. The teams start a lot and finish very little. The teams think they have too many